Avoiding Future Bhopals

ByB. Bowonder, Jeanne X. Kasperson, Roger E. Kasperson

Runaway chemical reactions are rare events, particularly in this heyday of
the redundant and ‘defence-in-depth’ safety design for complex, high-risk
technologies. Yet, during the chill of night between 2-3 December 1984, a
statistically improbable worst-case scenario moved from the computer
simulations of the risk assessors and played itself out on the unsuspecting
citizens of Bhopal, India. A parade of failures – in design, in maintenance,
in operation, in emergency response and in management – conspired with
a southerly wind and a temperature inversion to push a lethal cloud of
methyl isocyanate (MIC) out to kill and injure thousands of people,
animals and plants in the area. By sunrise, the unprecedented horror had
catapulted Bhopal to the head of history’s roll of industrial disasters (see
Table 5.1).